Researchers Reveal 4 Reasons Why Satisfaction Is Only Temporary

YOGYAKARTA – Feeling satisfied, according to researchers, can be a bad thing related to life motivation. But the more there is nothing satisfying, the more it makes life constantly haunted by restlessness.

According to researchers for the Review of General Psychology reported by Psychology Today, Wednesday, July 20, when satisfaction and pleasure are permanent, there may be little willingness to continue seeking further benefits or advancement. Nir Eyal, a lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, added four studies that explain the psychological reasons why satisfaction is temporary and dissatisfied more often.

A 2014 study published in the journal Science looked at participants who were asked to sit in a room and think for 15 minutes. The room is designed to be empty except for a device that allows participants to electrocute themselves lightly but painfully. Of the participants who took part, 67 percent of men and 25 percent of women electrocuted themselves. In fact, many of them have done it many times.

The study showed that people dislike being alone with their thoughts so much that they prefer to do new things even if the activity is negative. It's no wonder, therefore, that most of the top websites in America sell escapism to beat boredom.

Negative events are more prominent so that they affect more strongly than neutral or positive events. As the authors conclude on the study, it seems to be a basic pervasive psychological fact that the bad is stronger than the good.

Dissatisfaction is a negative that is better remembered. Because it departs from attention to bad things, so it is useful for evolutionary species.

Humans also tend to think about bad experiences. Even often reinterpreted with reflection many times. A situation of repeated contemplation, is a passive comparison to an unattainable standard. For example, reflecting on one failure by never finding a definitive answer to the question 'why can't I handle things better?'.

Research notes that, by reflecting on what went wrong and how to fix it, people may be able to discover the source of the error or alternative strategies that lead to not repeating the mistake.

In addition to the three reasons already mentioned for temporary satisfaction, it is based on adaptive hedonic factors. For example, every desired experience, such as passionate love, spiritual pleasure, and pleasure and success, is temporary because we think it will make us happy but not for long.

In The Pursuit of Happiness by David Myers, every desired experience is only temporary. The four components above, add a lot of dissatisfaction in life even when you are in a perfect situation. But on the other hand, without dissatisfaction we are never acquainted with the opportunities and victories that make life meaningful.